viral outbreaks

There are a lot of known unknowns and paradoxes in these times of uncertainty. Political, cultural, economic, and climatic disparities make it hard to rely on comparisons, other than in a general fashion, between countries. Despite the prior Ebola, MERS, SARS, and H1NI scares, the COVID-19 is the first truly worldwide meltdown, in the 21st-century globalized age of social media and the Internet. Instant unfiltered opinion adds to the panic and yet in some cases can aid rapid responses in finding cures and vaccinations. We are reacting much as did past plague sufferers, whose pandemics in terms of relative lethality were far more devastating.